Record Executive’s Art Collection to Be Auctioned at Sotheby’s in May

Publicly, Mo Ostin was a powerful executive in the music industry for almost 50 years who worked with some of the most respected musicians of the 20th century — Frank Sinatra, Jimi Hendrix, Madonna, Neil Young — before his death in August at age 95.

But privately, Ostin was an art collector who loved the “ritual” of touring museums and galleries and getting to know about artists, according to his son Michael Ostin, and he never bought more than he could fit in his home.

“There was a toughness in the way that he could look at and appraise things,” Lorne Michaels, the creator of “Saturday Night Live” and a friend of Mo Ostin’s, said in a recent phone interview.

Next month, the Mo Ostin Collection, made up of more than 30 drawings and paintings by 20th- and 21st-century artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein and Cecily Brown valued in excess of $120 million, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s on May 16 and 19, the auction house announced Tuesday. “This collection is the highlight and centerpiece of our May auction season in New York,” said Brooke Lampley, Sotheby’s chairman and worldwide head of sales for global fine art.

At the center of the collection are two major Surrealist paintings that had pride of place in Ostin’s home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. In the family room, on either side of the fireplace, he and his wife, Evelyn, hung works by the Belgian painter René Magritte: “The Domain of Arnheim,” executed in 1949, and “The Empire of Light,” from 1951.

“The Domain of Arnheim,” estimated to sell for $15 million to $25 million, is part of a series inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name, in which the protagonist seeks to “create the perfect landscape.” In Magritte’s work, a broken window frames a mountain ridge in the shape of an eagle while the fallen pieces of glass portray the natural landscape above. “The Empire of Light,” with an estimate of $35 million to $45 million, is one of 17 such oil paintings in which the artist juxtaposes an evening landscape with a sunlit sky.

As an executive, Ostin developed an artist-first philosophy that gave wide latitude to the talents he believed in. In 1977, he signed Prince to a three-album deal and gave him full creative control. “It was never about chasing hits,” Michael Ostin said of his father. “He always thought that you find the best talent, and you empower them to do their best work. And if, in fact, if they made great records, then the popularity would follow.”

Trust your instincts, follow what you love, and success will come. That was Ostin’s approach, and sometimes he shared it with key figures in other sectors of the entertainment industry.

In 1985, Michaels was at a crossroads. He had stepped away from “Saturday Night Live” in 1980 to pursue independent projects, and wrote the film “Three Amigos” with Steve Martin and Randy Newman. But by 1985, Brandon Tartikoff, the president of NBC Entertainment at the time, gave Michaels an ultimatum. “If you come back we’ll keep it, but if not, we’ll cancel it,” Tartikoff said about the future of “S.N.L.”

“I had a really hard decision,” Michaels said in a recent phone interview, and Ostin gave “the best advice.”

Ostin, then chairman and chief executive at Warner Bros. Records, told Michaels: “It’d be hard going back because it’s a different time, but it’s what you love.”

“S.N.L.” could have disappeared after a 10-year run, but the show is approaching its 50th anniversary season — an achievement that in part reflects the influence of Ostin.

Even after Ostin retired, his love for music drew him across the world. Ostin and Michaels watched the Who’s 50th anniversary concert in Hyde Park London in 2015, standing on a plank on the side of the stage. “I looked at him and I thought, he’s 86, he’s right here,” Michaels, 78, said. “You can keep going as long as you want.”

As a collector, Ostin was thorough. “He deeply, deeply loved it,” said Martin, who is also an avid art collector. “He could talk about it and look at it for hours.” Together at the Tate museum in London around the late ’90s, they heard that Norman Granz, the jazz impresario and executive of Clef Records, had a Picasso for sale. “It was a gorgeous Dora Maar painting,” Martin said.

Ostin started his career in the music industry at Clef (which was later renamed Verve Records) in 1954, after dropping out of U.C.L.A law school. Through Granz, a friend and collector of Picasso, Ostin was exposed to fine art. “When he came into money,” Michaels said of Ostin, “it was a big priority for him.”

The 33 works for sale at Sotheby’s comprise 90 percent of the art Ostin owned, and all came from his home. A small Willem de Kooning painting hung above the two Magrittes in the main living room, where a large Joan Mitchell painting faced them; in the dining room, two Picassos appeared on either side of a fireplace, below an Arshile Gorky painting. Three Cy Twombly works welcomed guests in the entryway.

Surrounded by art, it was natural that Ostin’s son Michael, 68 — formerly an executive of Warner Bros. and president of DreamWorks, currently managing A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip and D’Angelo — also became a collector.

His father’s advice: “Trust your taste, listen to your gut, and buy what you love.”